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Is 'Blue Chips' a semi-sequel to 'One on One' (1977) ??

posted 17 years ago by jjtoday2001
3 replies | jump to latest

1. In "One on One," the college is called "Western State," in "BC," it's "Western University." (See Memphis State ---> U. Memphis).

2. The colors of the school in both films are blue and gold.

3. In both films, the school has big-shot alumni who throw money around for players in violation of NCAA rules.

4. In both films the school has a famous coach, based on a then-current superstar coach (G.D. Spradlin based on John Wooden in One on One, Nolte on Bobby Knight in "BC"), who decides to bend the rules to win.

5. In both films, the 'star player'(Robby Benson in "OoO", Shaq in "BC",) after a few sessions with the cute tutor, finds out he is actually a much better student than anyone thought.

6. Nolte even resembles one of the characters in "One on One," the thick-necked assistant coach whom Spradlin deputizes to have his gorilla-goon players beat the crap out of Benson, get him to quit the team. It's not hard to imagine this assistant would get the head coaching job when Spradlin retired, and Pete Bell was actually the same guy, 18 years later.

7. In both films, the team wins a big game right at the end of the movie, but the main character (Benson in "OoO", Nolte in "BC"), decides he is sick of the hypocrisy of the program, and decides to chuck his future at Western.

8. In almost precisely-identical ending scenes, immediately after deciding to quit the Western team, both main characters come upon a bunch of kids playing basketball in the playground, decides to stop by, and rediscovers the fact that just playing basketball is fun.

You could say that both movies are kind of cliched in places and it's just a coincidence they were so similar, but I can't believe somebody among the writers and directors of "Blue Chips" hadn't seen "One on One" 18 years earlier.

[–] dhshoops2001 17 years ago

Great call....like yourself, have seen both films too many times to count, both "cheese-fests" but both have a lot of good stuff in them for repeated viewings.

By the way, "One on One" was Bill Brasky's favorite movie.

[–] KCantu 15 years ago

These movies were nothing of the same at all. One is about a down and out coach cheating to get to the top, and all the people ignorant of the rules. They sell their soul. Bell comes to a revelation in Blue Chips that his team has already been compromised years earlier when his player took money to shave points. So he goes the next step and just lets the dirty alums buy some top talent. The parents of the recruits don't care about the rules, they just want to get paid. But Pete Bell IS NO Bobby Knight. Knight NEVER CHEATED, and his players always graduated.

The other is about a kid who is brought into the program, but the coach soon realizes he doesn't want him anymore. Coaches are doing this a lot. They over recruit positions, and the best player gets the playing time. The other loses his ride. He is forced to transfer or go through h#ll if he refuses.

[–] jaystarstar 13 years ago

Bell supposedly had been a huge winner earlier in his career, then had a couple of bad years, and the alumni pressured him to start bending the rules to win.

"Coach Smith" (Spradlin) in "One on One" had obviously made pretty much the same compromise himself earlier in HIS career (since the payoffs to the players were already standard procedure by that time).